Saturday, May 5, 2007

To Everything A Season...

Just like fishing, baseball, theatre, cold and flu, there's a season for game geeks, too. It's pretty much from July through mid-August, or (for those who really know the lingo) from Origins to GenCon. These two cons pretty much define the start and end of geek spawn-age.

Origins in Columbus, Ohio is the start of the season. The con generally falls around early July and draws in about 12,000 folks.

GenCon in Indianapolis, Indiana is the season's finale. It's the biggest gaming con of its type and draws in twice the geekage as Origins. 2006 saw 26,000 attendees! That's a lot of geek.

Both of these cons run from Thursday thru Sunday. 4 days of non-stop gaming of every gaming genre imaginable. Plus there are seminars and workshops for those who are truly interested in this odd little hobby.

The streets of Columbus and Indianapolis swarm with gamers during these cons. Everywhere you look folks are playing games. I love the fact that when I stumble back to my hotel room after a long day of demos that I pass folks playing games on tables in hotel lobbys. Sometimes these folks are still playing the next day when I leave the hotel.

There are tons of lesser cons in between Origins and GenCon, which makes perfect sense as a large population of gamers are school-aged and on summer vacation. These conventions are planned so all you need to do is drop a net in the water and scoop up a bounty of dice wielding gamers. It's what summer is all about.

Sure, geeks play games all year round.

But true geekage is done en masse.

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